Assistant Department Head; Teaching Professor of English

Education

BA, English, University of New Hampshire, 1976

MA, English, Arizona State University, 1980

PhD, English, Purdue University, 1990

Biography

Christopher Nielson, PhD has taught college English continuously since 1978, which included a visiting professorship at Greifswald University, Germany. He served as President of the Pennsylvania College English Association, directed a freshman composition program for four years, judged the annual Shakespeare contest for the English Speaking Union, and wrote the Shakespeare questions for the nation-wide Hi-Q academic quiz competition. He refereed submissions on Shakespeare for Pennsylvania English and has articles in Renaissance Quarterly, Explicator, Indiana English, Writing Centered, and Study Guides on Shakespeare for Hedgerow Theatre where he is the Shakespearean Dramaturge. In 1974, Nielson was a thru hiker on the Appalachian Trail.

Favorite Authors and/or Books:

Blake, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Dante, The Inferno

Dickinson, "There’s a Certain Slant of Light"

Frost, "Acquainted with the Night," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Joyce, "The Dead"

Marlowe, Edward II

Shakespeare, Hamlet, King Lear, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring," "Expostulation and Reply," "My Heart Leaps Up," "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"